The Guardian’s investigation into deaths caused by Tasers (Bolts from the blue, 6 November) thoroughly examined the human costs of our failure to regulate Taser use. Unfortunately, Taser advocates also overstate the supposed benefits of equipping the police with these potentially lethal weapons. As co-authors of a recent report on the legal, medical, and public safety ramifications of Taser adoption (Electronic Control Weapons: Reading the Evidence, Stanford Criminal Justice Center, 2015), we reviewed hundreds of publications on Tasers, including studies on how they impact on the rate and severity of injuries sustained by citizens and police.
At first glance, the research appears to support a relationship between Taser adoption and reduced injuries to suspects. However, this masks fundamental problems in the research, including the fact that many of the studies suffer from serious methodological flaws. More importantly, the most reliable studies report different findings based on how the researchers have chosen to count injuries in their statistical models. The different answers depend on whether or not a study has included Taser barb punctures in its injury counts. The barbs can cause serious injury if fired at a vulnerable area like the face, but even under normal circumstances, they are likely to pierce a person’s skin.
When these “everyday” barb wounds are excluded from the category of “injuries”, Tasers appear to reduce or have no impact on suspect injuries. When barb punctures are included as injuries, Taser adoption is associated with increased injuries to suspects. The studies showing that Taser adoption reduces injuries reach that conclusion by simply ignoring one type of injury – even in cases where police officers have classified barb punctures as “injuries” in their use-of-force reports. Moreover, there is little credible evidence for the oft-repeated claim that Tasers replace the use of lethal force. As the Guardian’s investigation shows, Tasers are certainly not risk-free and their use can incur serious costs. We all ought to be honest about these dangers – and ask probing questions of those who claim that subjecting people to high-voltage electricity makes them “safer”.
Akiva Freidlin and Jena Neuscheler
Stanford Law School, California, USA
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